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Success Stories

Walking around their 11,000 square foot warehouse in Plainview, NY, it’s hard to tell that Corey and Sara Meyer haven’t always known what they were doing in the fine chocolate business.

“When we first opened up we didn’t know that you can’t sell fresh chocolate at outdoor markets in the summer,” Corey said. “We went to a market early in the morning, and even though we kept our chocolate in a cooler, just by opening and closing the lid throughout the day, the product melted.”

“It was too hot to sell chocolate,” Sara said.

“Too hot,” said Corey. “And we also learned that you can’t ship chocolate between May and about mid-September. Sixty-three degrees is the perfect temperature for our chocolate. You can ship it, but it has to be refrigerated—down to 34 degrees. Then when it goes in the store, they raise the temperature to about 75 degrees. For mass-produced chocolate with preservatives, this is okay. But the change in temperature causes our chocolate to ‘bloom’—... Read More

New York, NY - The entry to the Entrepreneur Space in Queens, NY, contains book shelves stuffed with mystery novels, recipe books, various Fodor’s city guides, a janitorial supply catalogue and a New York State Mathematics text, grade eight. Turn left after the shelves and you pass a story board regaling details about the facility’s history.

A section of it reads: “The Entrepreneur Space is designed for all emerging businesses seeking space. While the primary focus will be on attracting food-related companies desiring kitchen manufacturing facilities and possibly office space, the ES will be open to any qualified, emerging business seeking to bring their operation to the next level.”

One such business to utilize this space was Krumville Bake Shop, a gluten-free bakery owned and operated by Antonella Zangheri. After just one year in the Entrepreneur Space’s kitchen, Zangheri relocated to her own facility in Brooklyn, NY. Since then, her business has doubled each year... Read More

New York, NY – Entrepreneur Madelyn Rich has jumped aboard the social media bandwagon to improve her small business. At 71, the former social worker, loan officer and paralegal is embracing e-commerce to increase her profits.

“I was always reluctant about using Facebook until an acquaintance said how it helped her business,” Rich said. “Now I see that it’s a real marketing strategy.”

For more than twenty years, Rich has sold handbags, totes, scarves, clutches, makeup bags, fingerless hand-knitted gloves and organizing cases at craft fairs around New York City. Friends and co-workers have long been buying her work to give as presents. Because she is tall, Rich said, she started altering and sewing her own clothes when she was ten.

She said that when the women in her family got together, her father called it a “meeting of the amazons.”

Just talking about exposed seams makes her grimace; and it’s for this reason that she hasn’t hired anyone to help with her... Read More

The education technology firm founded in 2011 by three graduate students Dana Pagar, Kara Carpenter and Rachael Labrecque, is receiving accolades for a new iPad application to help young children learn addition. The app, called “Addimal Adventure”, uses different games to teach learning strategies for solving addition problems. With the success of their first app, Teachley recently launched its newest math app called “Mt. Multiplis” designed to help struggling students master multiplication skills.

“Kara, Dana and I were graduate students at Teachers College at Columbia University. We were working on a research grant to develop math software, which was still a relatively new concept. As we worked, we saw a disconnect with commercial products and apps not coinciding with what research shows about young learners,” said Teachley co-founder Rachael Labrecque. “We decided to develop our own math apps for kids based upon cognitive research.”